First book by an African American comes to Thomas Cooper Library and the Web

The University has acquired a first edition of Phillis Wheatley's Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (London, 1773), the first book published by an African-American author, and has made the book available on the Web.

Acquired by the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections in Thomas Cooper Library, the book is the first copy of Wheatley's Poems on record for any library in South Carolina. Thomas Cooper Library is the first to make a fully searchable digital copy of the first edition available online for use by students in grades 6-12 and college. It is available at the Web site at
www.sc.edu/library/spcoll/wheatley/wheatleyp.html.

Mary Lu Dalton, chair of the English department at Dreher High School in Columbia, said having access to Wheatley's book online will greatly enhance the teaching of the text in literature and history classrooms throughout South Carolina.

"Students in Columbia have grown up visiting the Wheatley branch of the Richland County Public Library and have learned about Wheatley and her writing," Dalton said. "Being able to see and read Poems online will appeal to our students, who today are drawn by multimedia. It will bring her work alive in new ways and give greater meaning to our classroom discussions about the significance of her poems and their imagery and her use of poetic devices. It is a primary source that will make her book real for students. This is exciting news."

The poems of Phillis Wheatley (1753-84) are read and studied by students and scholars in various disciplines, most notably American literature, African-American studies, and women's studies. The portrait of Wheatley on the book's title page is the only surviving work attributed to Scipio Moorhead, an African-American slave artist who lived in Boston in the 1700s.

University of Maryland English professor Vincent Carretta, a leading scholar of 18th-century African and African-American literature, wrote the introduction for the University's digital copy of Wheatley's Poems. Carretta describes Wheatley as "the mother of African-American literature."

The library's first-edition copy of Poems was acquired with support from the College of Arts and Sciences and from library endowments. The University's newly established African American Research Program, under the direction of historian Daniel Littlefield, played an instrumental role in the book's acquisition.

"The library is proud to partner with the College of Arts and Sciences and its African American Research Program to make this very significant acquisition possible," Tom McNally, interim dean of the libraries, said. "The acquisition and facsimile are among several initiatives by the African American Research Program, which is housed in new offices in Thomas Cooper Library."

Littlefield said making Wheatley's book available in a digital form will give scholars the opportunity to understand more fully the enslaved black woman and the response her writings received in 18th-century America.

"As one of the first published African-American writers, Phillis Wheatley achieved unusual stature in the 18th-century Atlantic world," Littlefield said. "USC's offering of a searchable digital rendering of her work will be of immense importance to scholars of American and African-American literature, history, and society."

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